Back to basics: Consider buying a box of #10 envelopes. They fit inside a standard business envelope (#12) without folding. A folded SASE adds more thickness than a folded letter in a flat SASE. This sometimes causes envelopes to get caught in automated machinery. This is a good addition to your “tool box” for queries and SASE.

I found Gene Ewert’s suggestions about things to do when taking a
genealogy trip of great value, and several “rookie mistakes” he
mentioned were ones I’ve encountered through my years. Thanks Gene.

Gene suggested that the greatest rookie mistake was to not write
identification and contact information in your notebooks so that they
could be returned if lost. I would like to pass along an additional
suggestion.

I say “pass along” because this tip comes compliments of my late
mother-in-law, Mary Lib Tipton Thomas, who was a junior high school
librarian in Ohio for many years.

Mary Lib’s practice was not only to write identifying information on
the insides of the front and back covers as Gene Ewert suggested, but
to include it in the middle of the book as well. She always put the
school logo stamp on page fifty of each book in her library or in the
middle of the book if it had less than fifty pages.

A book would still be identifiable (and therefore returnable) because
of that interior stamp, even if it had lost its cover or end pages.
This tip is especially valuable for irreplaceable genealogical
notebooks and records.

The National Personnel Records Center is the repository for the 20th century service records. The files consist of personnel, health and medical records of discharged and deceased solders from all the services. The repository holds over 57 million individual files. Every year additional records will be released for public use.

Pre-World War I military records are available from the National Archives in Washington DC. For further information, visit the NARA webpage at http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/military.

This information was taken from Paul Follett’s column Tree Tracers published in the Lawton Constitution on November 5, 2007.

The Registry of War Ration Books, including 83 Canadian books can be found at the link below. For those of you not familiar with food rationing, during World War Two the government issued ration stamps in books to each family member. There were four series of books, and there was a
complicated maze of instructions (typically published in the newspaper) as to which stamps were valid at any given time.

Prior to this project at Genealogy Today, the largest known private collection of ration books was a 900-book collection housed in Colorado. The registry was approaching 5,000 books (early October 2007), and is expected to double again in 2008. In addition to the books being collected,
contributions from visitors to the web site are helping expand the database and ensure these interesting genealogical documents get properly archived.

The “Guardian,” a famous UK newspaper, and the “Observer,” the world’s
first Sunday newspaper, are going digital.

So far, issues of the “Guardian” from 1821-1975 and the “Observer”
from 1900-1975 are available. In early 2008, both of the newspapers
will be online in their entirety (from 1821 for the former and 1791
for the latter). Both newspapers are searchable. Searching is free,
but you must buy a timed access pass to view entire articles.

Have you checked out PERSI lately? It is available through HeritageQuest. While this is a subscription program, many libraries with strong genealogy programs allow access on site, and some do from your home. More about PERSI from the Allen County Public Library (http://www.acpl.lib.in.us/genealogy/persi.html):

“The Periodical Source Index, or PERSI, is the largest subject index to genealogical and historical periodical articles in the world. Created by the foundation and department staff of the Genealogy Center of the library here in Fort Wayne, Indiana, PERSI is widely recognized as being a vital source for genealogical researchers.

PERSI is a comprehensive subject index covering genealogy and local history periodicals written in English and French (Canada) since 1800. The time period of the articles ranges from the 1700s to the present. More than 1.8 million index entries from nearly ten thousand titles are represented by this work.

If you are in one of the fourteen Allen County Public Library facilities, you may search the PERSI resource by clicking on “E-Resources” on the main webpage <www.ACPL.Info> and scrolling down to “HeritageQuestOnline.” Clicking on that link and then choosing the “Search PERSI” option with open the index for you. If you do not live in Allen County, IN, check with your local library about the availability of HeritageQuestOnline in your area.”